Kevin O'Leary: Gun culture glorifies war weapons

Dec. 19, 2012

Updated Aug. 21, 2013 1:17 p.m.

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Mourners greet each other at the funeral for Noah Pozner, a 6-year-old shooting victim, Monday, Dec. 17, 2012, in Fairfield, Conn. Pozner was killed when a gunman walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., on Friday and opened fire, killing 26 people, including 20 children. ASSOCIATED PRESS

Mourners greet each other at the funeral for Noah Pozner, a 6-year-old shooting victim, Monday, Dec. 17, 2012, in Fairfield, Conn. Pozner was killed when a gunman walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., on Friday and opened fire, killing 26 people, including 20 children. ASSOCIATED PRESS

My wife and I were at Fashion Island on Saturday when a gunman in a parking lot by Macy's let loose with 50 rounds. We were never in danger, but seeing panicked shop girls on their cells phones, police helicopters above and Orange County sheriff's deputies carrying assault rifles was not your usual holiday shopping experience. We live in a post-Columbine world, and it is not pretty. The rash of mass shootings this year, from Seal Beach to Sandy Hook, makes one feel that when the history of this era is written, the iPhone and rampant gun violence will be viewed among our major, lasting contributions. We have much to be thankful for in this holiday season, but after the massacre of 20 first-graders and six teachers in a suburban Connecticut school, "sleeping in heavenly peace" has taken on a sad and somber meaning.

Guns and America. It is as if you can't say one without the other. Our gun culture is totally unique. In a series of charts, the Washington Post illustrated just how far ahead of the rest of the world the United States is in terms of gun ownership. The key statistic – there are nine guns for every 10 Americans. Roughly 30,000 Americans are killed each year by guns; more than half by suicide. But thousands of gun victims – children and adults with families and loved ones – were not planning to exit this world quite so suddenly. Thousands of others suffer life-altering injuries.

The Post wrote: "Americans don't just have more guns than anyone else – 270 million privately held firearms. They also have the highest gun ownership per capita rate in the world, with an average of about nine guns for every 10 Americans. The second highest gun ownership rate in the world is Yemen; yes, Americans have nearly twice as many guns per person as do Yemenis, who live in a conflict-torn Arab nation still dealing with poverty, political unrest, a separatist Shia insurgency, an al-Qaida branch and the aftereffects of a 1994 civil war."

And that, of course, is the issue that people who want serious gun-control measures – such as the Assault Weapons Ban that Sen. Dianne Feinstein vowed Sunday to reintroduce in Congress – have with the NRA and Second Amendment absolutists. Pistols and hunting rifles are one thing. But semiautomatic assault rifles and Glock 9mm pistols, like the one that maimed former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, with magazines that fire dozens of lethal bullets in a fraction of a second, these guns are weapons of war. Designed to kill people, lots of people quickly and brutally, they are not guns for hunting deer or quail with your grandfather.

The mass shooter in Connecticut allegedly shot his victims with a .223 caliber rifle. These AR-15 assault rifles – touted by Guns and Ammo as an ideal home defense weapon – are based on the famous M-16 rifle that was a mainstay of U.S. servicemen in Vietnam and subsequent foreign conflicts.

In National Defense, James Fallows described how an M-16 shoots a rather small bullet that strikes the body of an enemy combatant at a high velocity, entering cleanly leaving a small hole, but then its light weight and high speed cause it to tumble end-over-end carving its way through soft tissue and bone, causing grievous internal injuries, until it leaves the body via a jagged, sometimes gaping, exit wound. In the aftermath of last week's deadly one-man commando assault on a primary school, those small-caliber bullets, ripping and tumbling through tender flesh, are on all of our minds.

What kind of nation allows weapons of war to be used on innocent children? Obviously, no rational person supports this insanity. A great many subcultures flourish in the United States, a diverse and tolerant nation. We value individuality, creativity and passion for many slices of life, from bird watching to surfing to motorcycles to antiques. But some American subcultures have a toxic aspect, and the gun culture that has developed around weapons of war, as distinct from handguns for home defense and hunting rifles, this subculture appears to lead unstable people, often isolated, lonely young men, to abuse these weapons of destruction in ways no one condones.

The United States has the most liberal gun laws in the developed world. With the same laws and a different culture we might have the public safety of, say, Canada, but we don't. No, instead our nation has a violent edge and a small percentage of individuals, mostly male, in both inner cities and in quiet suburbs, seeking solace from their struggles and demons by aiming the barrel of a loaded gun at someone else.

At Sunday's memorial service in Connecticut, President Obama said, "We cannot accept events like this as routine." Will the Sandy Hook massacre of innocents cause us to reform our gun laws? Will it lead to change in a gun culture that glorifies and sanctions high-powered weapons of war? One can hope; a free people can act.

Kevin O'Leary is a journalist and political scientist at the Center for the Study of Democracy at UC Irvine.

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